Brennen of Alara
"Look straight at the people you kill; don't take your eyes off them for a second. And don't ever forget them because they won't forget you. Ones who kill are always chased by death, always living alongside death… work that risks one’s soul is truly beautiful!" -Brennen of Alara History Born in the distant land - possibly on another plane - of Alara. Brennen rose from obscurity when he allied with Raolin to found the Band of the Raven, a mercenary company. The two men campaigned throughout the planes of existence, working for the highest bidder and acquiring a reputation for treachery and brutality. Brennen departed from the Band of the Raven to pursue his own arcane research. At that point, he disappeared for a time from the annals of history, before resurfacing in Celymnaia. There he adventured for a time, before joining a military police force and rising to the rank of sergeant. There he won a reputation for cruelty and a willingness to obey any order, until he poisoned his commanding officer, and was killed in a standout within the guardhouse. After the rise of Lothaire Parvaiz, he was resurrected and commanded to do the bidding of the Druid Emperor, at which point he disappeared from history again. He died sometime thereafter, and was counted among the heroic spirits on Tir na Og. He was resurrected by Silvius, and helped him in his rebellion against Nim Lawfey. There, Brennen once again acquired a reputation for a callous disregard for human life. He created many constructs and machines of war, commanded troops on the battlefield, and set fire to the city of Emperor’s Tooth, killing everyone who lived there. He helped repair the throne in Thunderdome, before taking his men north to the great domed city in the arctic, claiming the throne there. Called Xiclotl by the local inhabitants, Brennen colonized the city and recovered the King in Yellow, Yellow Sign, and Pallid Mask from its depths. He has turned Xiclotl into a scientific and arcane research facility, where he can create terrible constructs and dread spells undisturbed. In the Northern Dome, Brennen found a degenerate descendant of the Hyperboreans. He learns much about Thule and the Hyperboreans from her. At a point, he believed she is holding back from him, and employs torture. He is unsuccessful, and something in her gaze convinces him to stop. He nonetheless resolves to kill her, for he quite rightly fears the implications of freeing her. Nonetheless, he never quite gets around to it. He eventually starts confiding his secrets and plans to her. Sometime shortly after the Winter War, Marshal Abi Eodauga of Nadezhda would take a voyage up north to meet with his counterpart in Xiclotl. Their meeting with be cordial, and Brennen would give Eodauga the gift of an ancient and terrible spell that he had learned - the Hyperborean Star. In truth, Brennen knew better than to try to cast the spell himself, and wanted the Marshal of Nadezhda to test it for him. Abi Eodauga was none the wiser, and would go on to use the spell to great and terrible effect. Personality Brennen presented a calm and professional demeanor - even a sort of military discipline. There was always something off about him; at the very least, he was unmoved by suffering, seeming not to even notice it. He lacked a moral compass and any sense of lasting loyalty, drifting from place to place, killing anyone who stood in his way. The darkness in his soul came from an obsession with fire. Some observed that though he was a sorcerer, he had not mastered fire - fire had mastered him. He exhibited awful joy at the sight of burning life, especially when he was the one doing the burning. At his core, Brennen was a stunted and twisted human being, a brilliant yet barely functioning psychopath best given a wide berth. Though Brennan could be charismatic when the mood took him, most knew him as a recluse, and he was not seen in the public sphere often. He did not give grand speeches to stir his men to action. This contrasted with his active personality during a military campaign. Whenever his feet stepped onto the battlefield, his voice would boom out orders as one would pound a drum. He acted decisively, without hesitation as any monarch should. But as soon as the combat concluded, he would return to his silent state. He was only recorded as having given one public address, at the opening of the War of the Philosopher-King. Address to the Northern Imperial Army at the Eve of the War of the Philosopher-Kings "For twenty-seven years the Final Empire has rebelled against the branding of war antiaesthetic... Accordingly we state... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others... soldiers of the Final Empire!... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that the struggle for the city in speech... may be illumined by them!" -Brennan of Alara Leadership Style "He was a man who saw fighting only in terms of the utmost brutality. His way of thinking conformed more to a mental picture of masses of the enemy bleeding to death before our lines than to the conception of a subtle fencer who knows how to make an occasional step backwards in order to lunge for the decisive thrust. For the art of war he substituted a brutal force which, as he saw it, was guaranteed maximum effectiveness by the will-power behind it.... Despite the pains Brennen took to stress his own former status as a frontline soldier, I still never had the feeling that his heart belonged to the fighting troops. Losses, as far as he was concerned, were merely figures which reduced fighting power. They are unlikely to have seriously disturbed him as a human being." -Assessment by Warrizek of Sarindel Brennen was a distant and reserved monarch, preferring to delegate mundane tasks to others. His attention to tasks was mercurial at best. At times, he would throw himself upon a project with manic focus, especially when it involved his twin passions, soul gem research and golemcraft. He was also capable of malaise and apathy, and would abandon his duties out of boredom. He often mused about leaving his monarchy, but stayed on as Twin-Emperor largely due to the resources it brought him. All too often, his aides would have to do a great deal of legwork in his absence, and cajole and plead with him to retain his interest in affairs. As a war leader, Brennen was ferocious and wantonly destructive. He was disinterred in the human factor, ignoring his own forces and focusing on the deployment of his arcane constructs and in the wholesale slaughter of the enemy. Altogether, he saw his role as monarch in terms of magical research and implementation, not the supervision of people. Given his great propensity for violence, it was often said that the kindest thing he ever did for his people was to not care about them. Feats of Magic A formidable sorcerer even amongst the ranks of the Philosopher-Kings, Brennen was sometimes misunderstood as an unimaginative war mage, obsessed only with mastery of fire. This was laughably untrue. That he was a terror on the battlefield was true, but Brennen's true interests lay in research and craft. He was a master craftsman and golem-forger, second only to Rick of Aglazdere in his knowledge of artifice. His research on the nature of the soul was thorough and profound, and his inventiveness with spells undeniably ingenious. Carnage to him was merely a demonstration of his knowledge; a performative act. * Perhaps the greatest invention he was known for was his grim discovery of a process by which a spell scroll could be branded upon skin, allowing him to store a vast repertoire of magic upon his flesh. * Working with Vitreous Vrinn, he was able to rediscover the lost of art of creating flight crystals. * Working with Vitreous Vrinn, he was able to harness flight crystals to power a fleet of naval ships of his own design. * After sitting upon the Twin Thrones, he engineered a horrific weapon in the form of Alaran Fire, which poisoned all it touched for generations after the flames had guttered out. * Working alongside Silvius, he was able to repair one of the broken Twin Thrones. * Working alongside Silvius and using the Twin Thrones, he was able to repair the entirety of a broken timeline, fusing it with a severed past. * Using the lore of the Hyperboreans, he devised a means to bore a hole in the Dream of the Old Ones, creating a pocket dimension between the dreamlands and the waking world. Ultimately, however, he was unable to enter the dream in its entirety. War of the Philosopher-Kings'''' ''"Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne. — and ofttimes also the throne on filth." -Brennen of Alara Brennen would lead troops from the Final Empire in an attack on the survivors from the Arendurian Empire, so that he might seize the artifacts and arcane research that lay there. The attack would be ultimately unsuccessful, but Brennen would duel the demon lord Tolumvire, and banish him to the Abyss. Though he held the upper hand, he would deem the price of victory too steep to press on. Brennen would go on to war with the Kingdom of Jotunheim, killing King Ymir and his giants, and seizing the city of Utgard, giving the Final Empire a foothold in the north. When King Raine attacks Guilddon, Franz Forrawyn of the Reich Nördlich retaliates by leading his army on a dangerous seaborne attack. Forrawyn and the Hexenjägers storm Xiclotl, intent on destroying the northern throne. Brennen immolates himself on the throne, killing all the Hexenjägers. In doing so, he rids the north of its premier mage-killers, and preserves both his research and the throne itself. There were those in the former imperial army, however, who whispered that Brennen had prepared contingencies for the event of his death. The truth of these rumors has yet to be tested. The truth was more complicated. When Franz Forrawyn confronted Brennen in the Dome, he explained the Dream to him. He presented Forrawyn with three choices. * Join forces to shatter the Dream and make war with the gods. * Join forces to shatter the Dream and harness the power of the gods. * Live in a false world; like shadows on a wall. Forrawyn choose the last option; a false, peaceful dream free from war and magic. Brennen set himself alight in response. He had done all he could by himself and driven himself mad doing so. He believed he was doing Franz Forrawyn a favor. They will all perish in his fires as the flames spread slowly but irreversibly through the Dome), and Reise Forrawyn would never have to know about the Dream. She would have her perfect world. Nightmare of Brennen Due to his experiments attempting to bore a path into the dream, Brennen created a transient realm termed the Nightmare of Brennen, in which his spirit along with the spirits of Franz Forrawyn and the slain Hexenjägers reside, doomed to do endless battle in a wintry hellscape. Legacy (Beyond Good and Evil) Brennen earned himself the dubious distinction of being perhaps the most obscure Philosopher-King. His greatest and most terrible deeds were performed long before his eventual resurrection on the peak of Tir na Og, before living memory. In the Final Empire itself, the scars of the civil war were branded on the psyches of the descendants of the thousands he consigned to the flames. Beyond his country's borders, he was often relegated to Silvius' shadow, or somehow conceived of as a vassal or a provincial governor - an impression Silvius did nothing to dispel. In truth, the secretive and spotlight-averse scholar-monarch was comfortable with this state of affairs. In the north, where Brennen was better known, he was a dark and fearsome figure, the sorcerer-king who unearthed the secrets of Thule, brought New Arendur to its knees, massacred the giants, and turned the Hexenjägers into ash. Even after his death, the people of the Reich speak his name with distaste and fear. Brennen's skeleton still sits in the northern throne. There are no monuments to him in any inhabited place. Standard of the Emperor Category:Mages Category:Monarchs Category:Final Empire Category:Characters Category:Player Characters Category:Jacob Category:Alara Campaign Category:Dead Category:Philosopher-Kings